Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/160

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134
Hero-worship.

"All day long while steel-worker's helper on the sky-scrapers."

"O you are such a wonderful young fellow! Wonderful alone in your being brave enough to mount the sky-scraper skeletons! And still more wonderful in possessing the muscle necessary for wielding a sledge-hammer all day! May I feel your biceps? I am anxious to have my hands on the very muscle that slung the sledge-hammer!"

"Anything at all!"

"0 what a biceps! Like a tremendous boil protruding out of your arm except that it is hard as steel. Among the scores of Strong Hanses whose biceps I have been privileged to pinch, you are the muscular prodigy! [1] You must be a terrible slugger! I pity your opponent! Only a pyramid of jelly after you got through with him! Do you know, Mr. Strong Hans, that I have fallen in love with your biceps?"

"That's a funny thin' ter fall in love with! But just feel me chest muscles and leg muscles."

"They are steel!" I cried in ecstacy. "Because of your being a muscular prodigy, I am driven beside myself in hero-worship! Do you know what the word 'worship' means? It means that I could prostrate myself with lips to your dirty shoes, and cry out, over and over again, forever, forever, your wonderful endowments! I could forever call you Sledge-hammer

  1. In the summer of 1921 I twice saw moving pictures of Jack Dempsey arching his naked biceps. I was thirty feet away and his size was magnified at least twice. I carefully watched for comparison with Harvey Green. The protuberance was not equal to Harvey's, who was far from being approached by any of the scores of sluggers whose biceps I have pinched. I can never forget Harvey's mountains of biceps.